MILITARY ACTION ISN’T RULEDOUT IN NORTH KOREA CRISIS
Key envoy stresses ‘capabilities,’ slams Russia, China stance
The top U.S. diplomat to the United Nations blasted Russia and China for “holding the hand” of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un after Pyongyang’s latest ballisticmissile test. Nikki Haley said Pyongyang was “quickly closing off the possibility of a diplomatic solution” and suggested the United States would consider military action if necessary.
WASHINGTON — The top U.S. diplomat to the United Nations blasted Russia and China on Wednesday for “holding the hand” of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, as the Trump administration struggled to respond to Pyongyang’s latest ballistic-missile test.
U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley chided Moscow and Beijing over their opposition to a Security Council resolution condemning North Korea and imposing greater economic sanctions for what she called its “sharp military escalation.”
She also said Pyongyang was “quickly closing off the possibility of a diplomatic solution” and suggested the United States would continue to consider military action if necessary.
“One of our capabilities lies with our considerable military forces,” Haley said during a Security Council meeting in New York. “We will use them if we must, but we prefer not to have to go in that direction.”
Haley’s pointed speech marked the latest effort by the Trump administration to rally allies and rivals around an agenda to blunt North Korea’s progress, days after Kim’s regime tested an intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM, with a range that experts said would put it within reach of Alaska.
But her remarks also illustrated the limits of the White House’s options and lacked specifics about what concrete steps the administration is considering.
Analysts said a military confrontation could escalate quickly into a war on the Korean Peninsula and Japan, where the United States has stationed tens of thousands of troops.
In Pyongyang, Kim vowed Wednesday that his nation will “demonstrate its mettle to the U.S.” and never put its weapons programs up for negotiations, North Korean state media reported.
The hard line suggests that North Korea will conduct more weapons tests until it perfects nucleararmed missiles capable of striking anywhere in the United States. Analysts say Kim’s government believes nuclear weapons are key to its survival and could be used to wrest concessions from the United States.
The standoff cast a shadow as President Donald Trump prepared for his first meeting with Russian President Vladimir Put in and his second with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit, which opens Friday in Hamburg, Germany. Trump also will meet with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the heads of the U.K. and Germany.
“We’ve been pretty consistent that we are never going to broadcast next steps,” deputy White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters aboard Air Force One as the president traveled to a stop in Poland on Wednesday.
Before leaving Washington, Trump revealed more frustration with Xi, whom he has personally lobbied to enact sanctions on Chinese banks that do business with North Korean companies.
The U.S. Treasury Department announced last week that itwould block the Bank of Dandong, along the border region between China and North Korea, from accessing U.S. markets. Officials said was the first of potentially greater sanctions.
On Twitter, Trump wrote: “Trade between China and North Korea grew almost 40% in the first quarter. So much for China working with us — but we had to give it a try!”
Chinese data released in April showed China’s trade with the North grew 37.4 percent during the first three months of the year compared with the same period in 2016. China said then that overall trade grew even as it complied with U.N. sanctions and stopped buying North Korean coal.
South Korea President Moon Jae-in said Wednesday that the world should look at tougher sanctions against the North and insisted the problem must be solved peacefully.
Russian and Chinese diplomats used the U.N. Security Council meeting to push their joint proposal for a suspension of North Korean nuclear and missile testing in exchange for a suspension of U.S. and South Korean military exercises. Both countries also condemned the U.S. antimissile system being deployed in South Korea and called for it to be removed.
Early Wednesday in Asia, U.S. and South Korean forces conducted joint military exercises that the U.S. Pacific Command cast as a show of “ironclad” resolve.
During the U.N. meeting, a Russian official questioned whether North Korea’s missile was an ICBM, suggesting it was an intermediate
That prompted Haley to request a second turn at the microphone, during which she said: “If you see this as a threat, if you see this for what it is, which is North Korea showing its muscle, then you need to stand strong. If you chose not to, we will go our own path.”
North Korean state media said Kim told “scientists and technicians that the U.S. would be displeased to witness the DPRK’s strategic option” on its Independence Day. DPRK stands for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
Kim also said North Korea “would neither put its nukes and ballistic rockets on the table of negotiations in any case nor flinch even an inch from the road of bolstering the nuclear force chosen by itself unless the U.S. hostile policy and nuclear threat to the DPRK are definitely terminated,” the Korean Central News Agency reported.